From Yobie Benjamin at SFGate:
The world's largest oil skimming ship arrived in the Gulf of Mexico and as usual is entangled in the bureaucratic morass of BP. I am sure the delay is being caused by two issues - money and how much it would cost BP to commission the ship and absolutely dumb US EPA regulations.
US EPA regulations prohibit ships from discharging foul water in US waters and that makes sense. We don't want a ship to come in and throw their garbage water and/or bunker fuel on our waters.
The "A Whale" is different. It sucks in foul and contaminated sea water and then processes it separating oil from sea water and discharging the treated sea water back to the gulf. Now it is true that the discharged sea water has some small residual oil and there lies the EPA's knotted response - They want to disallow discharge of the cleaned water because of small residual crude.
"You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!"
Whatever blundering giant is stopping the action, whether BP or a federal agency, get out of the way now and permit the Whale to start clean-up operations.
Has anybody, at all, made anything that even remotely resembles a halfway sensible decision regarding the cleanup operation.
ReplyDeleteCertainly not in a timely way.
ReplyDeleteAin't bureaucracy grand!
ReplyDeleteBureaucrats! Love 'em or hate 'em, you can't live without them. Though ... er ... actually, you probably could. Chuck 'em into the oily waters and then let's see if they want to continue to put obstcles in the way of that ship starting its work.
ReplyDeleteA Whale may be going to work if it passes the tests of the bureaucracies.
ReplyDelete